A dream educational opportunity for five Texas students

Dec. 23, 2008

New Brandeis partnership will provide full, four-year scholarships to ASP scholars

    A partnership between Brandeis University and a special Texas academic incentive program is putting the dream of getting a prestigious college education within reach of five high school students from the Lonestar State. Each would be the first in their families to attend college.
    The Dallas-based Academic Success Program works by disproving misconceptions among some Texas high school students and their families that a college education is for them unattainable and unaffordable. The program partners with colleges and universities to motivate students to earn a spot into a four-year institution by excelling in high school.
    “Brandeis embraces and is proud to be a part of the ASP mission,” said the university’s Dean of Admissions Gil Villanueva. “Through ASP’s leadership and programming, students from underserved backgrounds and under-resourced communities are placed in the position to realize the American Dream.”
    Villanueva said ASP and Brandeis complement one another because they share a core value of social justice. He said the Brandeis Committee on Admissions is working with ASP to select the university’s first ASP scholars, who will receive full, four-year scholarships and attend Brandeis as part of the Class of 2013. The names of the recipients will be announced in April 2009.
    ASP has been expanding. It has spread from three original high schools in the Wichita Falls Independent School District to include 12 public high schools in the Dallas Independent School District. During the 2008-2009 academic year, ASP said it would provide comprehensive college readiness to more than 900 first-generation students, 300 of whom are college-bound seniors who are in the top 10 percent of their class and have high SAT scores.
    “Brandeis’ support of this program is incredible,” said Thomas J. Urquidez, the program’s executive director. He said ASP’s objective is to change communities through education and equity building, requiring older students to give back to younger students through tutoring and mentoring, so that each empowers the other.
     In Texas school districts, ASP provides college readiness to hundreds of inner-city students who are primarily minority, low income, and the first from their families to attend college. Selected students attend the most prestigious institutions in the country: Brandeis, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, UPenn, Dartmouth, Columbia, Babson, Bates, Bowdoin, Wellesley, Tulane, SMU and all of the major Texas universities.
    Founded in 1948, Brandeis University is named for the late Louis Dembitz Brandeis, the distinguished associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, and reflects the ideals of academic excellence and social justice he personified. The university, located just west of Boston, is a member of the elite Association of American Universities, and is consistently ranked among the world’s top liberal arts, research institutions.